Given how long it takes to ramp up a node and start making any money, it would benefit node operators to be able to decommission a node without taking a financial hit waiting for a new node to fill.
You’d guarantee a graceful transition because Storj itself would replicate and verify the content, eliminating user error, and getting a 100% “graceful” success rate as long as the node operator leaves the old and new nodes online until it completes. And you don’t bother other nodes with having to replicate lost content by eliminating the graceful exit failure potential.
Anything that makes life easier and more reliable for node operators should improve reliability and stability of the network as a whole.
As an outsider with a bunch of wasted disk space, a 1Gb symmetric internet connection, cheap and reliable electricity, and ~20-years experience running public-facing servers, I’m thinking Storj could be fun. And in the winter I pay for heat, so electricity is effectively free (the heat the server generates comes right off my heating bill) while in the summer it is rarely hot enough to pay for A/C in my “server room” so I don’t amplify my electricity bill with cooling costs. I have some advantages that might make me a good node operator.
I’m in the “curious” phase more than the “Yeah, this is a good idea” phase, but every time I see Graceful Exit I always see reminders that the process doesn’t work very well and it seems like getting disqualified is likely/normal. Maybe that’s true, maybe not, but that’s how it is presented.
Let us game theory it? If I were a node operator and planning to shut down a node, I’d balance the odds of a Graceful Exit failing and I lose out vs running the node normally to the last possible minute (getting a bit of extra income) and just pulling the plug (guaranteeing the fail that I’m expecting to see anyway).
I’m not actually that much of a jerk about it and I’d do it properly if I could, but it might not be to my advantage to do so.
Does encouraging node operators to just pull the plug benefit the network?
Does rewarding node operators for maintaining network reliability and stability benefit the network? Maybe not enough to justify the development costs and that’s a fair answer.